EPICTETUS SPEAKS
stoic messengers scouts of god
do nothing against your will and you will not suffer harm
anything beyond your power is nothing to you
if you have a favorite cup remember it might be broken
embracing your child you embrace a mortal
death is nothing terrible your life is not your own
leave all these things and never look behind
decline nothing that is offered and do not be bewildered:
let him wish nothing whoever would be free
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AMY KATHERINE CANNON is a writer and writing teacher living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from UC Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Gerard Creative Writing Endowment. She is the author of the mini-chapbook ‘to make a desert‘ (Platypus Press, 2016). Her work can be found in BOAAT, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Juked, and LIT, among other places. She is Managing Editor of Palaver Arts Magazine, a student publication.
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Read more by Amy Katherine Cannon:
A poem in BOAAT
A poem in Zócalo Public Square
you stand a long time /
by the creek, then /
feed it two pennies, /
one for you, one /
for the love /
inside you that /
you can do nothing /
with or about.
A talisman against the agony /
in his knees and hips //
for which he was taking /
black-market fentanyl
I greet your gliding flight O wings of death / But there are other signs too
the story / the two white women will not retract, despite the fact /
that inside each story we tell another writes itself
the intoxicating ministry of dusk, the anchor of daylight lifting, sheets white / like a freshly crushed pill, // the vortex of the body and the clap of the / coral tongue...
Before we go any further, I want to publicly acknowledge //
that I love every person in this room. I mean it. /
We’ve traveled from all over to be here, and I love /
each of you, all of you, every last one of you, except /
Harold
I tithe 10% of my new underwear to my future /
self, the one who has fallen in love.
Along one river fell /
all the luck in the world.
The man keeps telling me I’m beautiful. /
I still look young. //
He says it like I’ve asked for it, /
but I don’t care. //
For him or beauty.
How did you travel up my country, /
land at my neck, /
complicate the frontier between /
chin and throat? Oh, folly—
